MISS TESS and the TALKBACKS

With Woody Pines

MISS TESS and THE TALKBACKS [Thomas Bryan Eaton on electric guitar, and a rotating cast on the bass and drums] regularly steal the show at venues with something a little rowdier and more eclectic. Infused with classic country and honky-tonk, southern blues, New Orleans jazz and swing, and sounds of swamp pop and early rock n’ roll, she and her band take pride they are able to blend so many different styles of American roots music and call it their own. Tess is not only very skilled on her own soloing guitar chops, but has been able to hand-pick some of the best accompanying musicians throughout the years as she has toured through all fifty states. Currently based in Nashville, Tess and her band seem to be both from everywhere and nowhere. Between the fusion of their musical styles and constant shows on the road, they are the embodiment of everything that it still home-grown in America. Miss Tess also lists Bonnie Raitt and Tom Waits among the artists she admires. Both have that ambitious stylistic range. Waits, she notes, "was able to take some of those older jazz and blues influences and kind of twist them around and do his own thing." That's just what Tess and her band do again and again with top notch musicianship to boot.

MISS TESS & THE TALKBACKS PERFORMING "I CAN'T HELP MYSELF"

If you’re wondering where the music of Nashville troubadour WOODY PINES comes from, look to the streets. It was on the streets as a professional busker that Woody first cut his teeth, drawing liberally from the lost back alley anthems and scratchy old 78s of American roots music, whether country blues, jugband, hokum, or hillbilly. Heavy rollicking street performances are the key to some of today’s best roots bands, like Old Crow Medicine Show (Woody and OCMS’ Gill Landry used to tour the country in their own jugband), and they’re the key to Woody’s intensely catchy rhythms, jumpy lyrics, and wildly delirious sense of fun. Woody traveled all over the streets of this country, road testing his songs, drawing from the catchiest elements of the music he loved and adding in hopped-up vintage electrification to get that old country dancehall sound down right.